Until the day I die
by Death and Destruction
Summary: A martyr imbuing...


Until the day I die  
  
The darkness closed in over me, rushing over my head as it attempted to breach the walls of defiance I had erected years ago, trying to drag me down into the formless abyss to consume me for all eternity… But that must not happen now, I have a job to do, a mission to save…  
  
How could it all have come to this? All the fighting, the constant struggle just to keep alive, though why we even bother is a question that I grapple with daily, even as I make sure we live long enough to wonder why the next day, or week, or whatever. And to think that I had believed my life to be an unending spiral of torment before.   
  
Even then, though my life, if you could call it that was one nigh-unbroken wall of failure stretching into eternity, with only the break of my few successes breaking though to let some light come to me. This was what I lived for, though. The impossible cause, the insurmountable odd, the 1% chance schemes.   
  
My work, if you could call it that, showed this failure every day. Working at a mental correction facility for sociopath is not what one could ever call fun. Indeed on life's list of jobs that are enjoyable, it comes somewhere below your body being used as spare parts in a health clinic, or a needle-tester to see if they are sharp.   
  
Every day I would come into work and greet the dredges of society, people which were not place upon the electric chair because some lawyer got paid enough to make an insanity plea, so they got sent here.   
  
People who would kill just for the fun of it, just because someone breathed their air, just because someone would look at them, those were the people whom I had the distinct pleasure of meeting. I came very close to having to be incarcerated along with them several times, really, I don't know how I managed to keep myself from killing them.   
  
The point of the clinic was to make sure that they were "rehabilitated" before we sent them out back into the real world. That was bull. We were just giving them a second chance to kill again…  
  
It was the third case I escorted back out. He saw my nametag, on in its accustomed place, and he thought I was one of the people who had dragged him into this hell. He swore revenge, and spit at me even as "justice" demanded I do nothing but help him into his car that would take him back to civilization. Until the day I die…  
  
It was just a week later…  
  
He had found my home from looking me up, the net I suppose, the how doesn't matter. All that did was I went to my house, and found my lovely wife, and my daughter, my beautiful, sweet daughter, dead.   
  
Mutilated, most likely raped before death, both of them. I know that he did it, because he had wore a necklace, some sort of pagan symbol, on his neck. He had carved that symbol into their faces with a butter knife.   
  
They never found him… I did.  
  
I found him by chance, my humanity shattered, what little I had left snapped like the cord of a bungee jumper, with the same mental effects. I had dealt with the refuse of humanity for so long, I thought I had no emotions left, I was wrong.  
  
When… It happened, my soul quit. I guess it was carved up just as much as my family, because they were my lifeline to sanity, my tether to the surface, and when they died it was broken, leaving me to tumble helplessly to the crush point at the bottom of the sea.   
  
I found him in a bar, one of my favorites, where I tried to forget, never succeeding, always just making more memories fade…  
  
He was sitting there drinking, acting like nothing had ever occurred, this spawn of the devil, this man, no not a man, who had taken everything from me.   
  
He had no warning, not a chance to even cry to whatever god he worshiped for forgiveness, which was how it should be.  
  
My knife, the only thing I had of my family, a heirloom of a abusive father, my mother dieing in childbirth, I had with me, the blade sharpened by the bodies of the many It had slain in its long career of death.  
  
The attack was swift. A short walk, a simple upward motion, then down, down like the motion of a skydiver whose parachute was forgotten. The knife went down in a beautiful arc, the blade entering his head at the base of the spine.   
  
That was all, he was done, not a chance for life any longer, no more a chance than he gave my beloved family. Not that he deserved as much.  
  
After that, I found life again. I returned to my job, and after some grief from the boss, allowed to continue, but it was never the same…  
  
I soon found I could no longer look at the scum like human beings. After my firsthand experience with their kind, they were no longer penitents to be saved. Instead they were objects to be destroyed.   
  
The times when they would try to escape soon became my favorites, as then I had a chance to gun them down.  
  
Those times came far too seldom…  
  
I began to "help" some escape. I would unlock their doors, and have a shortage of officers for some reason or another. Since I ran the cameras, no one noticed.  
  
Then, when they made the break for it, I would be there, my rifle in hand, extending the welcoming mat of hell.  
  
They would smile, seeing me, thinking that I had come to help them finish their escape, after all, I had told them that their friends or family had bribed me to do so.  
  
The look on their face, that look when I sighted their useless eye in my gun, it was the sweetest thing.   
  
The knowledge that there was no escape was the greatest pleasure to me…  
  
The worst ones were the best, for they would get a different expression, one that spoke volumes, one that, I am sure, mirrored the ones on their victim's faces at the same time before their deaths.   
  
Then came the bullet, the speeding messenger of death, brought to them by me. Until the day I die…  
  
I was eventually found out, of course. One too many coincident. One too many deaths.  
  
I got out though, having heard the discussion to capture me over the cameras I monitored.   
  
I escaped into the city, where I began to hunt those who had been let out before I began my quest.  
  
It was there that I met him  
  
I was in a nightclub, searching for another murderer that had escaped death before. I had though I would bring death with me, I had no idea I would find him.  
  
In the corner, a man lurked. That is the only word that fits. He was immaculately dressed, like a man going to a business meeting. The only problem was he was dead.  
  
Or at least he should have been.  
  
I knew this, for I saw that face ever time I slew another of the depraved, every time I would let myself sleep, this visage would creep up upon me.  
  
I knew he was dead, for I had killed him, with my own dagger, stuck it in him and left him there.   
  
He was the one that had started all of this.  
  
The one that killed my family.  
  
But how, my mind wondered? Was he not already dead, his soul gone to oblivion or whatever awaits the truly despicable?   
  
He was dead, or should have been.  
  
Then a voice came, a voice that seemed to issue from nowhere and everywhere at the same time.  
  
They do not live  
  
How, what, who? My fragile mind wondered these things, until as if in answer, the voice spoke once more  
  
Those who are dead hunt the living  
  
My mind was now hanging by a thread, waiting for any other information to make this whole scene make sense, though a part was already resigned to the fact that "making sense" no longer had any part in my world any longer.  
  
Sacrifices must be made- You must make them  
  
I grappled with these words, my mind reeling with impossibilities, until more earthly concern brought me back.  
  
He was killing again. The creature was bending over some poor woman, and appeared to be…  
  
It was sucking her blood.  
  
My mind screamed "vampire" even as I began to tell myself that this was not real, it did not exist.   
  
However, I could see the fangs, and the… thing had taken on a pale, corpse-like look, like the vampires of mythology.   
  
I tried to remember what I had read of vampires, such dark literature being an integral part of my early adult life.   
  
The only thing that came to mind was that fire was a weakness, and crosses. I had no crosses, and I doubted there was anyone to hear should I call anyways.  
  
The thing began to drink, the poor girl becoming more and more pale as her short time ran out.  
  
I knew that causing a scene, trying to stop it would endanger me, ruin my cover, but even as I watched the girl's struggles began to slow, to weaken.  
  
My future was made without conscious decision on my part…   
  
I ran to the bar, grabbing the nearly-full bottle of someone sitting there.   
  
Ignoring his cries of dismay, I pulled out my matches, my survival matches, though why I bothered had never been properly addressed in my mind.  
  
Lighting the beer, I ran toward the… thing, I could not call it a vampire without thinking of myself in disgust.  
  
Somehow, it heard me over the din of the people in the club, turning toward me, a look of recognition dawning on its pale face.   
  
It tried to drop and run, but I was too close by then. The same hand that had stabbed him with a dagger before now slung the bottle at him, like a child would sling the water in a cup at someone.   
  
The results were much different, however.   
  
The flaming liquid seemed to stick to this creature, and its scream was unearthly, yet at the same time music to my ears.  
  
That time it died, I am sure of it. Its blackened corpse crumbled into ashes at my feet, even as the other patrons laughed, thinking it yet another spectacle of these type clubs. I let them think so, bowing before leaving.  
  
I soon found others like me, devoted to hunting the creatures, each for their own reasons, but still resigned to spending their lives slaying the beasts, though not to give their lives slaying the monsters, as I feel I shall do. Until the day I die… 


End file.
